


but what about love (just move in close to me, closer)

by possibilist



Series: perfect places [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 11:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14617350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: 'she turns around and presses her back toward you, delicate bones, trusting, and you wait for her breathing to even out before you put your palm on her hip, the skin jagged and softer, thinner and more tender than the rest, try to absorb some of the ache; you try to take it away.'more from perfect places au; they are soft & in love babies





	but what about love (just move in close to me, closer)

it’s early, early morning and you’re slipping into bed behind her; it’s saturday now and you had been in surgery for _hours_ and your back ached and you were hungry and all you wanted was to come home to lexa, to your bed and your apartment and the soft sheets she somehow manages to change every two weeks on sunday afternoons, after brunch and a walk in the park.

 

she’s curled up, her spine sharp in the relief of the bruise blue morning light coming in the windows, and she’s soft and small and beautiful; she has a scar on her lower back, cutting across her hip, and you don’t know what it’s from but it’s healed messily, rough. anya talks about it, growing up, with raven more than lexa ever talks about anything with you, and sometimes when you’re having wine with your best friend she tells you, quieter than her normal exuberance, more about this girl you’ve definitely, despite yourself, fallen in love with.

 

you take off your shoes, then your socks, exhaustedly, and don’t bother to put them in the closet; you take off your scrubs and get out one of lexa’s makeup remover wipes, because she’s a coherent enough person to own those and use them consistently. you don’t have any makeup on but they’re soft and fresh and calming and you clean your face before climbing in bed behind her, and she sighs and before you can wrap your arms around her she turns toward you and opens her eyes. they’re grey, this early and in this dawn-dusk, and she smiles, puts her hand on your ribs and rubs her thumb over them.

 

it hits you then, in this moment, that you want to marry her, that you want to spend your life in tiny pockets like this: her body open to you, her soft hands, the curve of her lips—relief, _joy_ —every time you come home; every time you come home to her.

 

‘hi,’ she says.

 

you can’t speak, so you kiss her once, gently, despite her morning breath, and she smiles, soft and small and just for you.

 

she turns around and presses her back toward you, delicate bones, trusting, and you wait for her breathing to even out before you put your palm on her hip, the skin jagged and softer, thinner and more tender than the rest, try to absorb some of the ache; you try to take it away.

 

//

 

she somehow manages to get two tickets to a yankees game on the friday of father’s day weekend, something about sucking up to her assistant principal for months, and she offers them to your dad with an embarrassed little smile. he gives her a full hug—the best—and she starts telling him how she’s glad that you’ll get to go to a yankees game with him, and his brow furrows.

 

your mom looks on fondly and your chest feels a little tight when he says, ‘you are, whether you like it or not, my child now too. so you and i are going to the game.’

 

she doesn’t really have a response, hides her moment of tears behind taking a big sip of her beer, clears her throat after and then agrees.

 

‘clarke knows nothing about baseball anyway,’ he says, and you roll your eyes and elbow him but that’s all it takes for lexa to launch into every fucking statistic about the yankees’ season and your dad grins at you.

 

//

 

they send you a number of increasingly drunk snapchats, lexa stealing your dad’s old yankees sweatshirt as the evening gets cooler than she expected.

 

she comes home smelling like beer and there’s a smudge of nacho cheese on her cheek and her eyes seem a little itchy from the grass; she falls into bed with you with a happy little sigh.

 

‘you had a good time then?’

 

she kisses your shoulder and snuggles into your chest. ‘yeah,’ she says, ‘we did.’

 

//

 

she has to chaperone prom, and she liveblogs the outfits to your snapchat like she’s a vogue correspondent at the met gala. you don’t think most people know how funny and clever she is, but after a while she sends you some selfies with her favorite students, and you crack open a beer and grin and curl up on the couch, wait for her to come home.

 

she sits down with you when she does, slips off her sneakers methodically and then gets up to put them by the front door, like you’re _supposed_ to, and grabs a beer of her own before sitting back down, curling up and kissing your neck once, without any pretense, just a soft hello.

 

she seems quiet, a little pensive, so you just sit and turn on real housewives of new york, which makes her roll her eyes but you know she actually really fucking loves it, because she can tell you, unfailingly, the plot of every single episode.

 

after a while, in the middle of another sonja fight, she turns to you and says, ‘i never went to prom.’

 

she doesn’t give you more information than that, and you sit with it and end up turning back to the drama on screen, because she does and you know by now you have to be careful and gentle. you can gather why: lexa was gay in a small town; she was in and out of a series of turbulent foster homes in high school; she went to undergrad on academic and athletic scholarships and was lonely.

 

you end up making out on the couch and then she goes down on you, twice, and you’re so exhausted and so sated by the end, your fingers trying to match the needy, frantic rhythm of her hips, that you don’t think any more of it that night.

 

a week later, though, and you’re scrolling through the list of events octavia sent you for possible parties over the weekend, and you _grin_ when you click on a link that leads you to a queer dance party with the theme GAY PROM.

 

you get a boutonnière saturday afternoon while she’s shopping in soho with anya—something to do with skateboards and she’d tried to teach you once and you had laughed so hard you hadn’t been able to do anything—and hide it in the kitchen cabinet behind all of lexa’s tea. you set about writing _prom?_ on a full packet of post-its and pressing them all over your apartment and when she comes home an hour later, sweaty and with what you think are new wheels on her skateboard, a skinned knee and flyaway hair, younger than you usually see her, her face lights up in a _smile_.

 

‘hot rabbit is doing a theme night—’

 

‘yes,’ lexa cuts you off, bounding forward and kissing you. it makes you laugh, this excitement, this unabashed happiness; you feel full, sated, _in love_. ‘i will go to prom with you, clarke.’

 

you kiss her again and she stops you so she can take pictures of everything. the next day, she puts on a dress shirt and a bowtie that matches your dress; you take out the boutonniere and pin it to her collar; this gentle, sensitive thing: camellia, violet, forget-me-not. love, love, love.

 

//

 

lexa dances wholeheartedly to britney, cardi b, robyn; she’s not a good dancer but she laughs and touches you and her cheeks are flushed with tequila and happiness.

 

a slow song comes on and you wrap your arms around her neck and press a kiss there, just under her jaw, and she puts her hands on your hips and squeezes, just once. you sway together like she never got to at sixteen: _real love hurts, but nothing hurts when i’m alone, when you’re with me and we’re alone_.

 

//

 

lexa’s had a persistent cough for over a month and is too stubborn to go to her primary care doctor about it; ‘i’ve had worse,’ she says, and she has, so you set up a humidifier on her side of the bed, send in a prescription for an inhaler to help her breathe better after she goes on her runs in the cold; pick it up bring her chicken noodle soup for lunch at school on your day off, her students laughing when she blushes.

 

she thanks you quietly, without words, later that night, running her hands down your body, watching you with big, awed eyes when you put your hands in her hair and tug and guide her to your core. she dips her tongue and you can’t help but, for a moment, think that this must be something close to holy.

 

her cough goes away within the week.

 

//

 

she comes to the hospital on saturday to eat lunch with you during your marathon fifty-two hour shift; you haven’t slept in a day and you’re sure you smell and you have a haircut that feels too short, just barely brushing your shoulders, and the hospital cafeteria is objectively terrible.

 

but lexa walks in, somehow still commanding in her beat up vans, denim shorts with one back pocket tearing off, a sweater, a baseball cap. she looks relieved when she sees you, hands you a bouquet of sunflowers, kisses you and then sits down, takes your hand in hers.

 

‘you look beautiful, dr griffin,’ she says.

 

//

 

you come home early in the middle of one of her days off, some random holiday or another that have lost all meaning to you because of your exhausting surgical residency schedule. she’s reading quietly in the corner chair you’d ordered from west elm, which was overpriced and unnecessary but you saw it and it reminded you of her, pale grey and elegant and soft. it sits in the sun, by a fern the two of you had somehow managed to keep alive all winter, and spring is finally drifting.

 

you come in quietly and she’s engrossed in her book and you take a moment to look at her. you’re in the most serious relationship of your life and she’s so beautiful, glasses slipping down her face and one of your sweatshirts from college with a hole in the collar, her hair thrown up in a messy bun.

 

you walk over to her and she smiles, golden, and you put her book aside and straddle her lap and kiss her, run your tongue against her teeth and eat up the little noises she makes like all you’ve ever wanted is this perdition.

 

you grind down on her and she takes your scrub top off, takes a nipple into her mouth and sucks a bruise into your skin. you reach inside her underwear and she is hot and wet and beautiful. when you sink to your knees she says your name like a prayer.

 

she tastes like the ocean; like forever.

 

//

 

lexa has to have her wisdom teeth out; you sign the papers and your heart gives a little flutter when you see your last names, _griffin-woods_. you had really gotten married, really been brave enough, and you smile when lexa comes out, bumps into a counter and then walks into three chairs.

 

you take her elbow and lead her out to your car, where she slumps over in the passenger seat and then squints at you, unfocused and drowsy and with swollen cheeks.

 

‘did they—’ she says, her words clumsy because of the swelling and gauze, and reaches toward her mouth; you grab your hand gently and shake your head. she sighs. ‘did they do something to my eyes? everything is _blurry_.’

 

‘your eyes are beautiful,’ you assure her. ‘you’re just stoned.’

 

she nods wearily. ‘that’s fine then.’

 

you drive by wendy’s after she insists she wants a frosty instead of the healthy smoothie you had thought she’d want, and you get a large. she sucks it down so fast her mouth bleeds so you have to pull over and change her gauze, and you really wish you were recording everything.

 

you finally make it home and she refuses any pain medication, adamantly, and you lowkey debate putting it in her mashed potatoes or something, because lexa never tells you when something hurts, ever, and she will be hurting now.

 

you get her situated with an ice pack and teen mom 2 playing and leave the room to pee and you hear her whining from the couch about how hot it is, and when you come back out she’s taken all of her clothes off except her underwear and looks forlorn without you.

 

‘you sulk in your calvins,’ you say, and she lets out a little laugh before a groan, bringing a hand to touch her cheek.

 

‘ _hot_ , clarke,’ she whines again, and you turn up the air conditioner and kiss her forehead and sit down next to her, lean back and tug her to rest her head against your chest.

 

she sighs and you trace random patterns against her skin, along scars and tattoos, divots and peaks.

 

she takes a shaky breath when you run your thumb gently over the scar on her hip; you still.

 

‘i—’ she pauses, like her brain is trying to catch up, her words less clear than normal, medicine and swelling and pain. ‘a window, when i was fifteen.’

 

‘a window?’

 

she sighs and sits up so she can look at you. ‘i would go out and wait in the playground by my foster home until it was late enough my foster father was asleep and i would climb through the window.’ she pauses, swallows. ‘it was… safer, that way.’

 

you clench your jaw because you want to take away that hurt but you can’t, it happened years and years ago and you love her.

 

‘i was climbing through one night and the wood was old, jagged; there was a nail i didn’t see, and i just—’ she shrugs, helpless, and you wonder if her skin still stings sometimes with the phantom of splinters tearing through it, the rust and metal, the blood, the pennance.

 

‘i’m sorry, love.’

 

she nods, lies back down against you. she tells you how she couldn’t go to the hospital, couldn’t tell her foster father anything because then he’d know she was sneaking out; she tells you that anya came over and patched her up as best she could with hydrogen peroxide and gauze. lexa had needed stitches, the doctor in you knows, and— _what i am aches in me_ , you remember, from one of her books, something she’d told you drunk in the middle of the night after a nightmare.

 

you kiss the top of her head and stay still, eventually her stomach rumbles and you extract yourself to heat up some mashed potatoes. when you bring them to her she looks a little nervous, a little disoriented.

 

‘you came back,’ she says, a little awed, and her hair is sleep mussed and her cheeks are swollen and one cheek is red and she looks younger, scared, lovely.

 

‘of course,’ you say, and she smiles as best she can. ‘eat your potatoes.’

 

//

 

she can’t fall asleep for hours later because she’s in too much pain, and finally she agrees to take her medication.

 

she sighs into your neck and you hook your ankle around hers, folding her into you; she falls asleep and you wish away her hurt in time with her even breaths, in and out. the scar on her hip against your palm; her skin is pulled together, after all this time—rough, healed, whole.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ask me abt them/send me prompts on tumblr


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